She's just the girl next door
by Gingerfloss
Summary: Fresh out of college, Anthony Stark and his three best friends seem to have landed on their feet... Until the girl moves in next door and changes everything. ((AU!))
1. Chapter 1

_Ever get an idea in your head that just sticks for a few weeks until you just have to write it? Here's the latest one I ended up with! I hope you enjoy this… and apologies for the language!_

_"__Fucks sake, _Tony you're going to have to do something." Clint pointed out angrily, scowling over at the other as he lent over the back of the seat, pushing his head out of the way to glare at the blockage in the road: "I'm going to be late."

"We're both going to be late." Natasha added with a scowl, leaning out from behind her phone to grab the blonde by the waistband, yanking him back down into his seat, causing him to huff in irritation, landing on the redhead and making her yelp.

The other man in the car was quite contentedly taking no notice, having bagged the front seat of the car before Clint could, head still buried in his copy of 'Advanced Physics for PHD'. Tony sighed, slightly too loudly, starting to wonder why the hell he'd agreed to drive any of them into town in the first place, or why he'd agreed to live with them all.

The cause of the blockage had no idea she was being a problem, she was too busy arguing with her ex-husband, who'd chosen that exact moment to call her. Virginia had been the middle of driving to work, but had stopped in what she'd thought was a quiet road to take the call. Unfortunately, the ginger hadn't even noticed the other car pulling around the corner and stop dead facing her; that technically had right of way, and was completely oblivious to the fuss she was causing.

"Isn't that illegal?" Clint scowled, shifting away from Natasha to try and catch the woman's gaze, flapping his arms: "Oy! You!"

"I don't think she can actually hear you." The redhead beside him pointed out suddenly, batting at his arms to try and keep them out of her face.

"Maybe." The man beside Tony suddenly interjected, having half closed the textbook in his hands to frown at his companions (Bruce was extremely good at scowling in the same way that particularly threatening school teachers could, and usually it earn him the result he was going for): "Someone should go and talk to her, there is a possibility she hasn't actually realised we can't get past."

For a few seconds there was silence, before everyones gaze turned on the driver. Yet again, Tony couldn't help but sigh: "Seriously? Thanks guys."

Tugging off the seatbelt he heaved himself out, not entirely he wanted to do this at 8:37am on a Thursday morning, and began to give a two fingered salute to the others. Of course, she chose that exact moment to look up, realising what he was doing, just as he noticed that he'd forgotten to turn around.

"Well, that was rude." The ginger woman pointed out sharply, electronically rolling down the window with her elbow, leaning out to speak to him as he rammed his hands in his pockets, wishing he'd remembered to move a little bit faster.

"So's blocking the road when people need to get to work." He retorted, the scowl almost equal to hers: "You're in the way."

"Then go another way?" She suggested, leaning back a little as her own frown increased, causing a crease between her perfect eyebrows: "There is more than one way to leave this awful town."

"Well. I want to go this way, and you're in the way." Tony replied with a scowl, resisting the serious urge to fold his arms, but he was starting to get the feeling that she wasn't particularly nice. Right now, she looked like everything he wasn't, beautifully dressed in a business suit, with perfect hair, shoes and a top of the range car, whereas he was stood there in yesterdays band shirt, jeans and converse that had more holes in than a colander, looking like (which he totally hadn't) just fallen out of bed and thrown himself into the second hand, and slightly held together by masking tape, car: "And I have right of way anyway, if you want to get technical."

She pulled a face, but both her hands where back on the wheel, starting to back up: "Well, if you _really_ want to be that arrogant about it." And that seemed to be his queue to leave.

Which Tony took, stepping backwards before she could run him over and darting back to his own vehicle, trying to correct his face before the others saw him: "Problem solved!" He declared, throwing himself back in with a grin: "She's awful."

Clint laughed: "I was hoping she would run you over. I call dibs on your stereo, Nat and I were wondering who'd get what when she squashed you."

Tony pulled a face as he elbowed the dashboard, kicking down hard on the gas pedal to convince it to work. He was planning on getting out of there as soon as possible and hoping he never saw her again.


	2. Chapter 2

Anthony Stark had no idea how all his friends, and people that he hadn't even known three months ago, had ended up living in his house. He should really have known this would happen, Bruce had mentioned something about it when he'd come bounding over to his best friend with the keys at work, but he never really listened to him about _normal_ things, but they'd been best friends since the first day they'd met at MIT.

The house had been given to him by his father, and tony knew it had been a serious bribe to make him move back out of the family mansion after he'd reappeared on the doorstep without a job or much else to do with his life after securing a first at university. He was the son of one of the richest men in America, and to be honest, he'd been counting on his father to offer him a job.

Unfortunately, Howard Stark didn't actually like his son, and they'd quickly come to the agreement that if he took the house, and the monthly allowance he'd been offered, he'd leave the family alone. This suited Tony just fine, and meant that he didn't have to put up with his mother trying to marry him off every ten minutes, or his father's constant complaining about what a success he'd been at his age, and could continue with his own life.

Bruce had been the immediate choice of housemate, partly because Tony had no idea how to clean, or organise, or cook anything, but partly because he had a strange suspicion the other didn't have anywhere really to go after finishing school. He'd never heard him mention anything about a family, or go home for a holiday during their years together, and had started to assume the other didn't have one. He had of course complained about the prospect of putting up with the other for god only knows how much longer, but hadn't been able to hide the same when Stark forced the other set of key into his hand during their usual after work coffee.

They'd been there less than a week when Tony had a call from Clint, a dirty blonde, motorbike riding mechanics student he'd met in a bar and sparked up a friendship with after discovering that he was on a mission to invent a crossbow with perfect aim in every shot. The call had been the inevitable 'can I crash on your sofa cos I can't pay the rent' that he'd been expecting since graduation, Stark had laughed and agreed despite the groans from behind the pile of toast in the corner that hid his housemate. He'd appeared that very same evening with a pile of bags fastened onto the back of his bike and a grin of delight at the sight of the other two. Tony had to stand on bruces foot before he made the expected 'if you where that poor maybe you should have sold the bike' comment. He was a strangely unmaterialistic person and barley ever seemed to own anything, unlike Tony, who always owned at least three more of everything than he needed.

Two weeks, and a job that had suddenly arrived for Clint at one of the many Starkbucks in the city centre later, and the fourth housemate arrived. Natasha Romanoff was beautiful, successful (even though Tony wasn't quite sure what she did, and want completely sure he wanted to know what the angry redhead did), and very, very scary. He'd only met her when the blonde had somehow dragged her to a party at their frat house, and had to spend half the night insisting that she wasn't his girlfriend, and that she was more likely to stab him than let him kiss her. Unfortunately, Tony had managed to prove that after one to many beers, earning himself a broken nose and a trip to A&amp;E at three am, but had earn him a solid friendship with Natasha. So the night that she, and her stuff arrived in the back of a taxi, he didn't bother arguing as he threw her the keys and lead her the only remaining proper bedroom. Clint had decided to move into the attic when he discovered that he could climb out of it and onto the roof, Bruce had taken the box room that Tony guessed had once been an office on the excuse that at least then he'd never have to clean too much, and he'd bagged the master bedroom because, after all, it was his house, leaving the new arrival to take what had obviously been intended to be a guest room.

Very quickly, the three men discovered that having a woman in the house meant a lot less time in the bathroom, and a lot more getting yelled at for things they didn't know needed to be yelled about. Tony almost suspected that Natasha was doing it on purpose, she knew she could get away with just about anything when Clint was around and Bruce had confessed to being completely terrified of her only a day after she'd arrived.

Luckily for the clan, the smaller house next door had been empty since they'd arrived, and they were all secretly hoping that nobody would move in, especially as nobody seemed interested in mowing the lawn or dealing with the weeds in their yard yet. Unfortunately, two months after the arrival of the redhead, Tony Stark had stuck his head of the front door to find out what the noise was, and come face to face with the estate agent.

"You've sold it?" He asked suddenly, making the balding man jump as he looked over the fence, catching sight of the other.

"Of course! Its such a lovely property, I can't believe it was on the market so long." He beamed, flashing Tony a surprisingly white smile.

"Great… uh…Who'd you sell it to?" He asked cautiously, looking around the ground around him and cursing inwardly at the amount of rubbish that had wondered into the garden.

"I'm afraid I can't tell you that." The agents smile barley faltered: "Client confidentiality and all that, but you won't have to wait long to meet them! They're moving in very soon!"

"Oh." Tony scowled, realising with a jolt that his planned day spent on the Xbox in peace whilst the others were out at work had just gone out of the window. Now he was going to have to spend the day doing the garden, he'd already decided he didn't like the thought of having a neighbour at all as he disappeared back behind his own front door.

"What you doing down there Stark?" Clint asked, four hours later, grinning down at the other as he pulled up the bike, kicking off the power as he flipped his visor.

"What does it look like?" The dark haired man asked with a scowl, not bothering to look around at the other when he recognised the voice: "Knitting?"

"I didn't know you could do that." He smirked, tugging off the helmet and swinging it as he climbed over the low fence to annoy the other: "You're turning into a right little housewife."

"Better that than a coffee _artiste._" Stark muttered as he yanked at another weed, having given up on trying to do it with a spade like Google had suggested: "Do you think anyone would care if I just fill in the garden with concrete?"

"What, like a car park?" He suggested, producing a coffee in the standard paper cup from seemingly nowhere, sipping at it as he lent on the wall: "Wouldn't it spoil the whole-" He waved his arm at the surrounding houses: "-Suburbia thing?"

"Didn't know you cared about exterior design Barton." Tony teased, grinning at the other as he lent up, sitting back on his haunches as he frowned at the plant in his hand: "Or did Natasha get you involved in that too?"

The two men had been so contented in their bickering that they hadn't noticed the figure that had appeared at the other end of the street, a box in her arms and ginger hair pulled up in a bun. She obtusely pretended not to see them, managing to reach the front door to the house next door before either of them turned around.

"Hell-oh…_oh_…" Clint beamed, rounding on her with an armful of weeds that he'd tugged out of the ground, mainly to decorate the top of Tonys head with from his vantage point on the wall: "_You're_ the new neighbour?"

The woman scowled, looking away as she retrieved her keys, slipping them into the lock: "_Yes, _you live there?"

"Technically, yeah, but its his house." The blonde grinned, pointing at the other man: "Say hi, Tony!"

Stark scowled, wishing he hadn't looked up, it was the same woman from a few days ago, and she seemed just as haughty as she had then. Her frown hardened as she turned the key, pushing the door open without comment and disappearing behind it, kicking it closed with her foot.

"You know, I don't think she likes you Tony." Clint muttered a few moments later, both of their gazes still trained on the door.


End file.
